This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In cellular networks, access points (APs), also sometimes referred to as base stations and/or Node Bs, comprise a receiver/transmitter that operates as the hub of local wireless network, and may also be the gateway between a wired network and the wireless network. The terms access point, base stations and Node B are used in the present application interchangeably and are not intended to be limited to a specific type of access point or a particular communication protocol. APs are normally installed and commissioned after a careful upfront planning and survey process, which is followed by extensive post installation optimization efforts to maximize the network performance. Such optimization efforts also usually involve a considerable amount of manual intervention that could include “drive testing” using specialized measurement devices to collect data on network performance at a variety of geographical locations. This data is then post-processed and analyzed to determine inputs for optimization. These optimization steps typically involve power adjustments, antenna tilt adjustments and the like.
While such prior planning, installation and post-installation efforts may be effectively carried out for small networks that provide coverage to easily accessible physical locations, they become very expensive for networks that may comprise complicated physical spaces spanning multiple floors of a building, including elevator shafts, stairwells, atria, meeting rooms, etc. Further, this expensive process may reasonable for macro networks, where a single cell may cover a large area (e.g., several square kilometers). In macro networks, the cost of the equipment, site establishment (including licensing), and per-cell operating expenses (and revenue) far exceed the planning and post-installation verification processes. But for small-cell (e.g., local area) networks, these traditional costs are orders of magnitude smaller and, therefore, an expensive site survey and post-installation validation and/or tuning process may not be economically feasible. In particular, the business case for an expensive installation process often fails when the network consists of a large number of small cells that cover an area much smaller than cells in macro (wide-area) networks. For example, the cost of installation procedures may be prohibitive in enterprise networks that are described herein, as well as applications that relate to high-density capacity enhancements of a downtown city square and ad-hoc deployment of a cellular network such as in military applications. Therefore, there is a need to provide simple and cost-effective methods for installation and on-going optimization of access points within a wireless network.